Product dispensing and verification systems, such as pharmacy dispensing systems, dispense a variety of prescription and non-prescription products from a stored inventory based on patient-specific orders. The various components of a patient order are generally accumulated in an open transport carrier such as a tote, and the contents are ultimately emptied into a labeled package for delivery to the patient. Fully automated systems are available that use robots to pick the products based on instructions from a computer control system. Such fully automated systems generally verify the accuracy of each dispensed item, its label, as well as the identity of the accumulated items by scanning sensors that are located on the robots, at each station where a product is added to a tote, and immediately prior to packaging. The sensors communicate with the control system to shunt totes with dispensing errors to a rejection station.
Fully automated dispensing systems can handle thousands of prescriptions per day, and are generally used by high volume pharmacies. However, they are not cost-efficient for use by smaller mail order, central-fill, or specialty pharmacies that process fewer than about 1500 prescriptions per day.
Previous attempts to semi-automate smaller pharmacies have employed robotic product dispensing units or dispensing robots and a computer software control system to perform some functions, such as order entry, automated tablet counting, and unit-of-use or pre-pack dispensing, while manually performing other dispensing functions such as manual counting, pharmacist verification, packaging and sorting. In such systems, products dispensed automatically by a dispensing robot are deposited into a tote, and the tote is placed on a transporting conveyor. The conveyor has a sequential, “racetrack” type configuration and includes a variety of additional stations positioned around the perimeter. These stations may include one or more stations for “countable” items that are manually dispensed by counting, stations for pre-counted items in “unit-of-use” packages or containers provided by a manufacturer or repackager, a verification station and a packaging station. Each station on the conveyor track forms a stop, at which the totes accumulate to await their turn for performance of the station function. If a particular tote does not require the item/function provided at the stop, an operator must intervene, such as by lifting the tote over the stop and placing it in a position on the conveyor past the station so that it can proceed to the next stations.
Such sequential, multi-station systems lack the ability to bypass one or more stations or stops. For example, they are unable to shunt single component orders directly from a robot dispensing unit to a verification station to bypass all of the manual dispensing stations in the system. The throughput speed of such semi-automated systems is limited by the need for each tote to stop at every station, and for each tote to be handled by an operator, either to dispense a product or to perform a function such as packaging, or to manually shift the tote past the station. Thus, these systems require the operations personnel and pharmacists to move around the pharmacy to fill patient orders. Such systems also require a substantial amount of floor space which is not always available in smaller pharmacies. In addition, they are not easily reconfigured to accommodate the addition or elimination of stations.
Thus, there is a need for an improved product dispensing system that can integrate computer-controlled robotic dispensing with traditional manual dispensing, verification and packaging functions and routing of totes, that can bring the orders to the personnel to allow them to be more efficient, that can mix and match various combinations of order processing stations so that all volume requirement needs are covered, that can easily accommodate addition or removal of stations depending on throughput requirements, and that can be configured and easily reconfigured, if necessary, to fit within the footprint of an existing pharmacy.